Publications

IBSC eBooks

During the course of this two-year research project involving 20 schools around the world, Dr. Cox conducted interviews with groups of boys, met with teachers, and made presentations to parents. He listened carefully to boys’ voices, and followed the thread of their thoughts. What emerged was a cluster of “dimensions of significance” where boys find value and meaning – Becoming Myself, Belonging and Influence, Pragmatic Transcendence, “Real-Time” Achievement, and Origins and Traditions.

For boys’ schools, there is much in the report that will both affirm and challenge. These “dimensions of significance” will also give us, we hope, a new lens to sharpen the focus of our work with boys. The report includes a concluding chapter with recommendations – directive without being prescriptive – that should inspire rich discussion.

Locating Significance in the Lives of Boys is available in the following ways:

1. IBSC Members have free access to the publication, and are granted permission to use and distribute the report in any form within their school community. 2. Non-IBSC members may purchase a single eBook with rights for one copy. Please note that the IBSC asserts copyright, and all rights are reserved. For those who are not members of the IBSC, the report may be used and downloaded only for personal and non-commercial use.

During 2008–9, nearly 1000 teachers and over 1500 boys told stories of memorable and powerful teaching and learning in the middle and senior school years. The project involved eighteen IBSC schools in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Teaching Boys: A Global Study of Effective Practices is the result of this unique world-wide collaboration. Writers are Dr. Michael Reichert, Executive Director of the Center for the Study of Boys' and Girls’ Lives at the University of Pennsylvania, USA and Dr. Richard Hawley, retired Headmaster of University School, Ohio, USA.

The report affirms and celebrates what teachers in boys’ schools do every day, and will generate vigorous discussion and reflection. It extends, often in imaginative ways, the range of effective pedagogy for boys, and signposts new paths for further thinking and research about boys’ achievement and motivation. No simple recipe book, the report invites the reader to listen to and engage in a vibrant conversation about teaching geared to boys.

Teaching Boys: A Global Study of Effective Practices is available in the following ways:

1. IBSC Members have free access to the publication, and are granted permission to use and distribute the report in any form within their school community. 2. Non-IBSC members may purchase a single eBook with rights for one copy. Please note that the IBSC asserts copyright, and all rights are reserved. For those who are not members of the IBSC, the report may be used and downloaded only for personal and non-commercial use.

More details, including IBSC member access to the publication and non-member ordering information is available on the Teaching Boys web page.

IBSC Monographs

The following books discuss a wide range of topics concerning boys' growth and education, and are available for purchasehere.

Boys At Play: Sports and TransformationBy William S. Pollack, PhD Dr. William Pollack writes, "For boys sports provide a true form of brotherhood. It is not surprising that women often do not appreciate men's love of sports and underestimate men's relatedness since, as in the ancient Olympics, they are usually kept distant from men's private world of play."

Dr. Pollack is an assistant clinical professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School. He co-authored In A Time of Fallen Heroes: The Re-Creation of Masculinity and co-edited A New Psychology of Men. In the monograph Pollack seeks to debunk the myth that boys and men are not empathic or nurturant in their own right. He postulates that male mentoring and the psychologically transformative aspects of boy's play; i.e., coaching and sports, weave a fabric strong enough to begin to heal the psychological split between a boy's need for self-assertion and affiliative connection.

Women Teaching Boys: The Confessions of Nancy LernerBy Nancy LernerIs there something unexpectedly positive for women to discover about single-sex schools for males? And is there a type of woman who is an effective teacher in an all-male school? These are the questions Nancy Lerner posed for herself in this monograph. Dr. Lerner taught English at University School for several years.

Told largely through first person anecdotes, Lerner's story unfolds as a lesson in overcoming stereotypes and myths. It has been theorized that boys are less self-conscious about expressing emotions in a single sex environment. How would a female teacher change the dynamics? "The value of women teaching in a boys' school is that the awareness of the differences allows us to feel the joy of transcending them. If polarization everywhere is the plague of the late twentieth century, here in the artificial world of the school, boundaries and barriers can be obviated."

Teaching Boys To Become "Gender Bi-lingual": A Challenge to Singe Sex SchoolsBy John Bednall Do in fact males and females use similar words but speak a different nuance of language which is the product of their sex? John Bednall, Headmaster of the Hutchins School, Hobart, Tasmania, emphatically answers - they do! How do boys and girls learn to understand what the other is saying? Bednall asserts that the basic difference in the way males and females communicate makes it imperative that males learn "gender bi-linguality" as one of the most important skills for living.

Bednall challenges boys' schools to lead boys to an understanding of what "it means to be female and hence enhance their capacity to co-operate, negotiate and share: it is a challenge for them to be human in its fullest and noblest sense." Only through such understanding will males learn how to negotiate respectfully with female perceptions of the world and become "gender bi-lingual".

Brad and Cory: A study of Middle School BoysBy Diane J. HulseBrad and Cory represent the composite images of two boys attending independent schools. For the purposes of the monograph, 'Brad' attends a boys' school and 'Cory' attends a co-educational school. Ms. Hulse uses their stories to illustrate the data gathered from four educational surveys. Their fictional experiences help the reader understand what Hulse believes are measurable differences between boys in single-sex and coed schools. Her monograph attempts to discover whether the qualitative, subjective observations she made as an educator in a single sex school might be empirically verifiable.

Statistical information was gathered using the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory, the School Attitude Measure, the School Motivation Analysis Test and the Sex Role Egalitarianism Scale. Then Hulse humanized the results using the life experiences of Brad and Cory as fictional illustrations. Her conclusions about value of single sex schools make the monograph a must read for educators. The future of single sex schools has been in doubt and Hulse hypothecates that something should be done before boys' schools become extinct.

Kind to be Cruel? Restoring Generosity to ManhoodBy Tim BlankenhornA new look at male behavior as portrayed in examples of American fiction

The Romance of Boys's Schoolsby Richard HawleyA reflection on what boys' schools stories tell us about the actual school experience.

Icarus in Our Midst: A Reflection on Boys at RiskBy Richard HawleyThis unusual and, we believe, thought-provoking piece reverses some standard thinking on boys in trouble—and on the deep nature of boys generally. Drawing equally on observed experience, depth psychology, and classical literature, Hawley makes the case that a boy’s trouble may not lie in either a personal deficiency or in a lapse in nurturance or schooling. The trouble, rather, may lie in the general culture’s civic need to channel boys along a course that denies their deepest impulses and desires. In sum, this essay is an invitation to rethink the nature of boyhood and the transition to adult maturity.

Boys Will Be... Using Fiction to Challenge Boys to Explore the Meanings of MasculinityBy John AshtonJohn Ashton argues "that there is a need to broaden popular culture's view of masculinity, and there is an equal need, if not greater, to engage adolescent boys in the conversation that perpetuates the current view and examine ways to expand it." After providing a review of the recent literature surrounding masculinity and masculinity in fiction, he offers a unit plan for teachers of English that suggests strategies to encourage critical thinking about gender in literature.